It can, and should, be argued that the greatest threat to humanity our species faces in Climate Change, for what are very obvious reasons …
- Irreversible shifts in Earth’s climate systems via tipping points
- Droughts, sea-level rise, mass migration, food insecurity, and ecosystem collapse are not just inevitable but are also happening.
- It will also trigger conflict, pandemics, and economic collapse of nation states
“Climate change is the defining issue of our time.” – UN Secretary-General António Guterres
You know all this.
Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is now gaslighting US citizens. Their mission was once to protect Health, and has now shifted to protect wealth.
Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, is proposing to reverse the “endangerment finding” that is the predicate for rules requiring polluting industries to rein in their greenhouse gas emissions. To hear Zeldin tell it, he is exposing some elaborate, bureaucratic ruse to bilk taxpayers. In fact, the endangerment finding is a simple affirmation that greenhouse gas pollution is causing climate change and therefore endangering people. And, of course, it sits atop a mountain of scientific evidence.
More on this in a moment, but first, a quick bit on CO2.
The Keeling Curve is being targeted
Since the 1950s, the data gathered via Mauna Loa has been used to create the Keeling Curve. Combine this data with ice core samples and we have a record going back over 800,000 years … like this …
We have, via our fossil fuel emissions, ramped up CO2 levels to such a degree that we are altering our climate, each and every year the levels continue to climb up and up …
This is a precise measurement, a robust undeniable fact. Increasing CO2 levels of a greenhouse gas like this leads directly to climate change. It is driving sea level rise, supercharging weather, and destroying food systems.
Denial of that CO2 is a greenhouse gas is not an argument with opinion, it is literally an argument with the laws of physics.
The proposal to shut down Mauna Loa had been made public previously but was spelled out in more detail on Monday when NOAA submitted a budget document to Congress. It made more clear that the Trump administration envisions eliminating all climate-related research work at NOAA, as had been proposed in Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for overhauling the government.
What has now been happening at the EPA?
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a proposal to undo the 2009 “endangerment finding”.
Yes, but what does that actually mean?
It is what empowers the agency to limit planet-heating pollution such as CO2 from cars and trucks, power plants and other industrial sources.
Back in 2007, the US Supreme Court make their landmark decision, Massachusetts v. EPA, in which they ruled that greenhouse gases are indeed pollutants that the EPA has the authority to regulate and the obligation to regulate if, in the EPA’s judgment, they endanger human health and welfare.
That in turn led to the 2009 finding by the EPA that “elevated concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may reasonably be anticipated to endanger the public health and to endanger the public welfare of current and future generations.” This scientific insight then enabled the EPA to start standards to limit and cutback greenhouse gases.
You can of course now see what came next. Big oil and gas interests, along with corporations that such regulations were impacting funded the Trump Administration, and so in return they now get it all rolled back.
A literal return on their investment in Trump is the attempt to obliterate such regulations so that they can increase their wealth.
How is any of this Justified?
In conjunction with the EPA move, Trump’s Department of Energy (DOE) published a 150-page report defending it all. The claim they published boils down to the assertion that scientific concern about the climate crisis is overblown.
- Report is here – “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate,”
Who actually reads such reports, and then thinks, “Gosh, I’ll change my mind now, here is the proof“. The public do not generally read 150 page reports. The subject matter experts who do actually read it will know their stuff and can rapidly call it out for what it is.
OK, so what about using AI?
You might be fairly skeptical of the many ways people use LLMs, but drafting a refutation of misleading statements that have regurgitated in variants many times over the last couple decades and therefore are well-represented, alongside refutations, in training data is not an obviously terrible application.
Here you go, this is ChatGPT …
Here is what Grok says …
Well gosh, what a befuddling conundrum we now face.
On the one hand we have the ramblings of a few deeply compromised and fossil fuel funded cranks, who are spewing robustly debunked BS with a very specific $$$ political agenda … vs … literally mountains of evidence gathered over many many decades and backed up by literally millions of climate scientists located within every nation state all around the planet – who is telling the truth, and who is gaslighting us with BS?
Credible media outlets are having no trouble calling out the BS as BS. What real journalists do is that they get multiple subject matter experts to guide them. Here are some examples …
- The Guardian (Aug 1 – No Paywall) – Scientists slam Trump administration climate report as a ‘farce’ full of misinformation
- Washington Post (July 31 – Paywall) – We fact-checked the Trump administration’s climate report
There are also specialist outlets run by passionate and knowledgeable subject matter experts doing the same …
- Inside Climate News (July 30) – Climate Scientists Look to Fight Back Against DOE’s ‘Antiscientific,’ ‘Deceptive’ Climate Report
Here are a few insights gleaned from the article above …
Ben Sanderson, research director at the CICERO Centre for International Climate Research in Oslo, Norway, posted a thread critiquing the report.
“Each chapter follows the same pattern,” Sanderson posted on Bluesky. “Establish a contrarian position, cherry pick evidence to support that position, then claim that this position is under-represented in climate literature and the IPCC in particular. Include a bunch of references, most of which don’t support the central argument.”
Sanderson highlighted examples, such as the report’s claims of “global greening” and increased crop yields, for which the authors ignored impacts such as heat stress, increased drought, and nutrient limitations, which the IPCC factored in to determine that more atmospheric CO2 would have a negative impact on food security.
Sanderson said the researchers had pointed to a flat number of fire ignitions in the U.S., “omitting that burned area, severity and persistence have all exceeded records.”
“This is not a systematic or complete assessment of the report,” Sanderson posted. “But even a brief read is enough to understand what it’s doing—it’s selectively isolating particular studies and data to support the narrative that climate is less severe than assessed, whilst ignoring a much wider body of literature.”
Even if the Trump Administration will not listen, it is still important for a response from subject matter experts, so that is now very much in the pipeline and being worked on.
What about the five authors of the DoE report, will this destroy their reputation?
Actually no.
If you start out with a reputation of being a deeply compromised fossil fuel funded crank, then you have no reputation to trash, you are already there before this. It is of course the usual suspects (Curry, Spencer, Christy, McKitrick, Koonin).
Does the rise to power of the Trump Administration means we are all F**ked?
Tl;dr; – No.
Yes, specific things are already baked in, but how it all plays out is still very much in our hands and the choices we make.
A couple of very obvious points, while the US might be quite determined to embrace Idiocracy as a master plan, most other nations are already moving in the direction of not only taking steps to mitigate the production of greenhouse gases, but are also devising long-term adoption strategies.
Despite the bluster of the Trump Administration, there are literally millions of citizens doing lots of amazing stuff as well. None of that will stop.
With tongue-in-cheek we can perhaps also thank the huge contribution being made by the Trump Administration itself – Tourism to the US is being rapidly destroyed and airlines are rapidly cutting back on flights to/from the US
When it comes to economic realities, then we have the rise of this …
- The number one cheapest source of energy is solar – ~$20–50/MWh
- The next cheapest source is wind – ~$30–60/MWh
- Then Hydropower – ~$30–60/MWh
- Once you get to Gas – ~$60–100/MWh
- Coal – ~$80–120/MWh
There are some excellent examples …
- India & Chile: Solar PV is already the cheapest electricity ever recorded in auctions (~$14/MWh)
- Norway: Hydropower is king due to abundant rivers and mountains
We are also not standing still, Solar PV module costs have dropped >80% in the past decade, and wind turbine efficiency and size have improved dramatically.
Yes, I know I know, Fox News talking points – Solar and wind are variable—so we also need storage (batteries, pumped hydro) and grid flexibility.
A balanced grid with solar + wind + storage + flexible backup (e.g., hydro, gas, nuclear) is the most cost effective option now.
Do I personally practise what I preach?
Of course I do, I not only drive an EV, but I also have solar on my roof along with a lot of battery capacity as well, so much so that my last utility bill was zero.
We have choices, despite the Trump’s lunacy, we always have choices.
“Not since Stalin and Soviet Lysenkoism have we seen such a brazen effort to misrepresent science in service of an ideological agenda.”
– Climate scientist Michael Mann
Tweets
Political Cartoonist Commentary
